Roasted Butternut Squash and Cottage Cheese Smoothie

OMG...my favorite smoothie these days is roasted butternut squash and cottage cheese!

I came up with idea last week when I found that I was "treating" myself to a eggnog latte practically everyday (*see note). I was at the grocery store and saw egg nog in the dairy section and thought...hmnn, instead of buying a coffee drink everyday, I can turn it into a meal by making my own protein eggnog smoothie!

I've also been kind of hooked on cottage cheese lately....it must be a "salt" thing. I thought, instead of using yogurt, I could use cottage cheese making it more like cheesecake, lol! Always trying to turn meals into dessert, aren't we?

When I assembled the ingredients for my brand new concoction I started to read the ingredients listed on the eggnog carton....first thing I see? 195 calories per 1/2 cup! 195 calories per 1/2 c.? Good Lord...there is no way I can make this taste eggnoggy, with only 1/2 c., unless I used some vanilla yogurt. But there was already so much sugar in the egg nog....whoops, wrong! High fructose corn syrup...no sugar.

Make no mistake....I am not so much of a "NO high fructose corn syrup" snob that I was not going to try and make a smoothie anyway....this one time. But I am enough of a snob to know that I would have to throw the rest out. There are too many better choices....but not for me, at that moment, when I had my heart set on an eggnog smoothie!

Needless to say, I was right. After adding the cottage cheese and 1/2 c. egg nog, it wasn't near sweet enough, or egg noggy enough. I ended up putting a couple more tbls of egg nog, a pinch of cinnamon and, oh yes....some frozen mammy fruit to try and save it. "Ma-may" fruit has a pumkin like color and consistency, and that's when I got the idea to use butternut squash. Unfortunately my innocent little experiment probably ended up over 500 calories (I may have even added a bit of maple syrup too...yikes).

The next day, lessons learned from the previous day, I started with

1 c. cottage cheese (203 cal)

1 c. roasted butternut squash (82 cal)
2 tbl maple syrup (100 cal)

pinch of cinnamon

1 c. of ice

1/2 c. water to loosen it to my desired consistency....voila!

under 400 calories

To be honest, it wasn't quite sweet enough, even with 2 tbl maple syrup (100 cal), so today I used 1 tbl maple syrup and 1 tbl brown sugar. Slightly better, but I wouldn't call it sweet. But that's OK. It is still yummy enough to look forward to making and drinking, in fact it's whats for lunch regularly...for a while at least. No more egg nog lattes! And the trade off is so much better.

Here are the nutritional differences between yogurt and cottage cheese.

1 c. 2% plain yogurt

154 cal.

3.8 gm fat

17.2 gm carb

12.9 gm protein

172 mg sodium

1 cup 2% cottage cheese

203 cal.

4.4 gm fat

8.2 gm carb

31.1 gm protein (!)

918 mg sodium

Ok, ok, so I admitted it had more sodium, but I sweat enough to allow for a bit more! The biggest differnce is in the amount of carbs and protein. Just FYI!

(note) When I order a small size eggnog latte, and I have the barista fill the cup 1/2 way with plain coffee first, so when they fill the rest up with the lowfat eggnog mixture it really only gives my coffee an eggnog flavor....full on eggnog is seriously sweet! (in a good way of course)